A variety of cargo container systems have been proposed in the prior art but have not developed into a universal system for cargo transport that answers the complex needs of both those moving their business or residence and the trucking industry.
Contracting a moving company to pack and ship all of their worldly goods is an act of extreme trust on the part of the customer, and high liability for the mover. Indeed, in many cases, the moving company refuses to pack all or some of the goods, and routinely declines to ship expensive or fragile goods, leaving such goods to specialty packing and transportation firms. Thus, a home owner, renter or company, upon undertaking to move, may find that the moving company does not want to handle expensive objects of art, antiques, collectables, memorablilia, electronics or other fragile or valuable objects, in large part due to the potential for theft in transit, including intermediate warehousing or transfer stations.
Thus, companies shipping retail items typically budget 24% of the value of a shipment for loss due to theft in transit, while moving companies may budget 10% or more. A typical type of petty theft occurs from a stacked pallet of merchandise in corrugated containers. In the case of a moving van, since boxes may be labeled with content information, the theft may selectively target the most valuable items. A thief will open, cut or punch a hole in an exposed side of a box, remove some merchandise and then rotate the box to conceal the damaged side. Typical loading dock or at destination location (of the person or company moving) check-in procedures merely confirm the receipt of a number of pallets containing a number of cartons or the total number of boxes in the moving manifest. Since the time and location of the loss cannot be determined at the time of discovery by simple external inspection, no recovery attempt is made. Such theft losses also occur in the warehouses and back rooms of retailers and wholesalers, and in the moving storage and transfer facilities.
Another common and accepted form of loss is in-transit damage. When items are shipped in corrugated boxes in a moving load or on commercial pallets, it is common for the boxes to sustain some internal or corner and end damage that damages the contents, or in the case of retail products renders them unsuitable for full value retail sale. Many wholesalers and distributors offer a level of claim for damages of 1 to 2% that will be honored without requiring return of goods. These low-level claims are frequently taken as an automatic discount by retailers regardless of the condition of the goods they receive.
Additionally, much larger losses due to damage during shipment are not uncommon, often due to poor packing of goods, but primarily due to movement damage, that is, damage due to handling of cartons from the initial home, apartment or office location into the moving van, jostling of boxes in the van during transport, handling of the boxes during unloading or transfer into and out of intermediate storage or transfer warehousing including during combining partial loads into a full load for long distance transfer, and accidental damage at any of those steps. Typically, such damages comprise large damage claims, as all claims, except self-packing claims come back to the moving company for resolution and restitution. Management of such large damage claims, which require inspection and repair of the goods, or in cases of retail goods shipping requires return of goods as proof of damage, are very costly. They entail additional shipping costs and substantial administrative overhead, as well as genuine costs due to product loss.
Accordingly, this exemplary state of the art reveals that there remains a significant and substantial unmet need for universal, robust, fully closeable, lockable, auditable and trackable small pallet containers for secure shipment of a wide range of household, business and government goods and records.